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TORONTO — Facebook Inc. said yesterday that it has banned an advertiser that used photographs of
a deceased Canadian bullying victim in an ad for an online dating website.

A Facebook user noticed the ad, which featured a photo of Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17-year-old Halifax
girl who died after a suicide attempt that followed months of cyber bullying and an alleged sexual
assault.

The user posted screen grabs of the ad to Twitter, provoking immediate outrage and a quick
response from Facebook.

“This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the Internet
and using it in their ad campaign,” a spokeswoman for Facebook said in an email.

She said the ad was removed as soon as it came to their attention, and the advertiser’s account
was permanently deleted.

“This is a gross violation of our ad policies,” the spokeswoman said. “We apologize for any harm
this has caused.”

The ad was for the online dating site ionechat.com, which placed the photo of Parsons next to
text that read “Meet Canadian girls and women for friendship, dating or relationships. Signup
now!"

Parsons’ father, Glen Canning, condemned the ad.

“I am completely bewildered and disgusted by this. This is my daughter, Rehtaeh. They have her
in an ad for meeting singles. I don’t even know what to say,” Canning wrote in his blog.

The Parsons case has been widely followed.
People magazine put her photo on its cover to illustrate a story on the consequences of
online harassment among teenagers.